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NA’s Updated Rules and Violations Policy

the WoT NA server, on the 8 of August, 2016 will be updating its Rules and Violations Policy:

“As we’re rolling out the updates to our pollicy, we’ll be wiping the slate clean for every Wargaming customer with an active account. Any prior in-game sanctions, chat violations, or forum warnings will no longer count against you.

Please Note
Permanent bans are not eligible for a “clean slate” — accounts previously banned under our current rules and violations policy will remain so.

Rewarding Positive Players

Players who consistently choose to follow the rules will be rewarded! Every three months, every player without any game, chat, or forum violations will receive a small reward and be entered into a drawing for 90 days of Premium time.

We believe these new policies will help improve everyone’s overall experience. We don’t want to punish people – we want to set clear expectations and then hold players accountable for their behavior in order to improve everyone’s gaming experience!

Players should learn from their past mistakes and not commit the same violations repeatedly.

Previously, violations would “roll off” and no longer count against you after a certain period. This allowed players to “game the system” by improving behavior only long enough for their violation to roll off.

Under Our New Policy

Players will receive one warning, and each offense afterward will count as a “strike” against the account.

Each strike comes with a restriction and restrictions increase with each strike.

Strikes do not “roll off.”

Once you have reached five (5) strikes, your account can be permanently restricted.

If you believe a strike was placed on your account incorrectly, submit a Penalty Appeal as a Support ticket and we will thoroughly review the issue.

Permanent Restrictions

Five (5) strikes in chat violations can result in a permanent chat ban.

Five (5) strikes in the forums can result in a permanent forum ban.

Five (5) strikes in game violations can result in a permanent game ban.

Please Note

Players will receive one warning, and each offense afterward will count as a “strike” against the account. ”

I still wish we could have positive feedback options/rewards in WoT like other games (LoL as example) have, it would diminish greatly the idiocy that goes on in the game at times. I suppose this is a start.

66 comments on “NA’s Updated Rules and Violations Policy”

Most likely not. Any sort of “checker” that would check for mods can easily be replaced by a fake “checker” that would ignore the mods. It’s all or nothing, either the current system or a complete ban on all mods

Most likely, but I still stand by my alternative suggestion. There are other games which (succesfully) require mods to have a hashed encrypted signature to be applied by the game publisher to be able to load in the game. This would require mod makers to submit their mod to WG and have WG approve or deny said mod.

Sure, this method might not be 100% foolproof, but it is a h*ll of a lot better than not doing anything at all. At the very least it will remove the majority of unwanted mods out there. And banning all mods altogether isn’t 100% foolproof as well, because there will still be ways to apply client-side modifications since there is no way to fully enforce a policy like that.

The problem is the what qualifies for a strike is ambiguous and if you have seen the terrible NA mods that just delete your posts and don’t give warnings (this would mean they have to list a reason other than they didn’t like it, eg: Bringing attention to T-22 rigging) then you know how bad this is going to be.

When WGNA can’t do anything about T-22 riggers and expect to be able to moderate chat and gameplay with 5 strikers = permaban this is going to be a disaster. 4 major strikers should each result in 30+ day bans and 5 minor strikes shouldn’t result in a permaban. I would far rather seem them handing out 30+ day bans for people pushing players rather than give them 1 strike.

True.
a pre-warning prior to the warning before the strikes.
I can see quite a few good players getting banned for just being good.
Ever since the QB vid with that Marder 38T getting the raseniai with aimbot, every time someone gets hit in a manner they think they should not have been hit, the REPORTED FOR AIMBOT cry in chat comes out. Every game there is 1 or 2 at least.
Personally, I only report Sky Pigs for shooting me, 10 reports for 10 sky pigs, or multiple reports for sky pigs that shoot me more then once.
But this has the makings of serious abuse.

There should be a mechanism to punish people who make false reports such as those who report another player for shooting them. If you report an arty player simply because they shot you when they are on the enemy team, you are acting like a big baby and need to go play Hello Kitty or something….maybe you can get a hug from your mommy and she can tell big mean old arty to stop shooting her little one. Maybe your big brother could come beat up my big brother or something.

Note to Wargaming: Good luck trying to get people buying premium accounts when they can be maliciously banned. Day one of this hitting the server, prominent streamers and YouTubers will be spam “reported” by the thousand by the usual crowd of “report” cry babies and immature morons “for fun”.

Except it will not work that way. Several of the WGNA mods have been very clear that all reports will be reviewed by a person before any player receives a strike. They were also clear about handing out strikes to people who repeatedly use the report system incorrectly.

my Concern is the false reporting of arty players because the population ( and i use that term very loosely these days) has a hatred for arty in general ….. what are they planning on Doing about False reports …..

you, like many, need to realize that it is one thing to get shot at by something that you have a chance of shooting back at, and another to get shot at by someone who is hiding in the corner of the map, and shooting with 95% impunity. said 5% being if a yolo scout makes it through and spots the sky pig, or if he is being spotted by tracers.
Only ones who like arty are arty players.
And unlike with the tanks, arty in this game is completely bonkers. Artillery has never been a direct fire weapon. It is a fire support weapon.
In the era that WoT is based on, Forward Infantry units would radio for artillery support based on map grids, and then correct fire for 2nd volley and on. I would think that 1 in 10000 shells at the most actually hit or even “”splash”” damaged a tank.

But when the scout makes it back to my arty, which happens fairly frequently, my big slow to rotate, aim, and reload arty has basically no chance to defend itself against the tank. Many tanks can one shot destroy any arty without any real danger of damage from the arty. And don’t start talking about arty not being realistic in this game where all members of the tank crew can be knocked out and unable to perform their job and with the click of a key they are all instantly healed…and with the click of a key every bit of damage done to the tank can be repaired instantly. This is a freaking game, stop playing it if you do not like it.

The price arty pays for that long range is no armor, health or mobility (for the most part), and of course terrible accuracy. If they get spotted, they die. Every tank in the game is a balance of firepower, mobility, health pool, camo, view range etc. People who complain about arty are just whiny little bitches who can’t stand that someone might choose to play differently than they do.

Team Kills are counted differently. I liked it when you got banned your premium time saved, now you have an idiot drive in front of you and you lose an hour of premium time. Makes me glad I have only spent $25 on this game since February 2015.

The good part is that it promotes less toxic actions in the forums and in the game…

The bad part is that player reporting system can be abused as noted by previous people in here. Maybe ban people who have actually cause an actual violation in the game with evidence, would be the best option, but this sounds more like an lazy approach more than anything else…

There is a reason why I’m not playing this game right now, for the past 3 weeks. People who have no experience in the game, are getting their way with everything, and it’s changing the nature of the game in a negative way for people who are more experienced, or have been playing more than 70% of the community. Sandbox is a mess, looks like a children’s playground went wrong, game graphics are actually getting worse in this game (please tell me HOW this is possible…), and the console based games are getting the most eye-candy.

Whatever Wargaming, ill just play GITS FA, or AW for the next 3 months until they decide to grow some balls.

of course a revolutionary idea to improve players behaviour would be to fix the game so that it was interesting, challenging and rewarding by matching teams and vehicles better to prevent rollover games.
players feel more aggrieved knowing they spent the last 4 minutes playing a match they had no chance to win. just a waste of precious gaming time.
Does WG think its fun for players who have been at work all day and want to chill out with a session of gaming enjoy being pinatas for hours on end?
removing the more obvious frustrations;
massive lose streaks,
too much RNG,
too many arty per battle,
fail platoons,
tank type imbalances would go some way to stopping the negative vibes affecting players.
I haven’t played in months, too fed up with the bs. i’d love to see chat forums and streamers saying things have improved and that its worth spending time playing but my head says it will never happen. sadly.

I have been stuck for a couple of months on one mission for medium tanks – “destroy 3 enemy artilleries that you spotted yourself”.

I just checked – I have 20 Pascucci medals which you get for killing 3 arties, about 15 of them in mediums – and I have no idea how many of those were where I spotted all three of them – let’s say one fourth of the time (probably optimistic). I have 44K battles – so it should take me about 10K battles for the stars to align themselves and I get this mission. That’s just stupid.

Anyway, back to topic. Sure, when you get 3 or 4 arties per side people play differently. But I have never, ever in my 44K games been killed by an arty where my reaction was anything other than “I screwed up”. Just grow a pair.

M4E8, with Derp. you can 1 shot any tier 4-5-6 arty easily, and most tier 7’s as well.
You are quick enough to break through. and the derp is not like the Cromwell derp in that you can see the shell coming and evade it.

This system in a game where it is so common for being reported for not being good enough of a player or being too good of a player, or just because someone in the battle gets bored… Oh yippee…. I am a statistically average player and have been reported for both not being good enough and “obvious illegal mod usage” which “I am still a garbage player inspite of” (I have never used a single mod, let alone whatever this report was for)

So basically, if you play long enough, you are going to get banned. Hope they do not implement this nonsense over here. (Never been banned, btw – but it is a question of time with all the red garbage reporting you for killing them or playing a premium tank.)

First i think any effort made to clean up the sewer of foul-mouthed players and offensive chat is commendable. Far too many think it’s just ok to say any damn fool thing that comes into their head, and too many of them ENJOY being hurtful to others. Let’s be clear here, NEITHER of those things is your “right”.

Second, the road to H-E-double hockey sticks is paved with good intentions.

I think a punishment system that goes from zero to perma-banned is excessive and unfair. A five (or whatever number) point system is as sensible as anything but 5 may be too little, and having them essentially stay on a players record indefinitely is too much as well. Wargaming says they will review each complaint individually and while i think they mean that, its a tall order to promise. If not done equally for all, it’s unfair period.

The chat situation is way out of control, the game is often openly hostile to new players, and until this game gets a verifiable minimum age requirement there are young people, children, to think about here. I don’t think this system will break down under some of the things others have already commented on like “everyone reporting arty” just for exisiting and other nonsense like that. Sad thing is, there is SO much bile in the chat they’ll be plenty busy with that.

I know, some will cry out and complain about “nanny police” and “political correctness” but that’s just bogus. Bad behavior is bad and we all know it and we know what it looks…sounds like.

I record replays of every game…i’m not worried about my conduct (and i can defend myself) but it is past time for some of the players to get worried about their own.

When a player receives enough reports for their case to be reviewed then if they’d been correctly reported then those who did so should get more weight added to their reports so the reviews are triggered sooner.

If a person has been incorrectly reported then those who reported them should get less weight added to their reports.

The other thing that would help is if the more sporting players in the game spoke up more and actually disagreed with the hate brigade. Even if only in support of someone else. If you see someone speaking sense then agree with them.

Nyx? I believe responded to several questions on the WoWS forums – no strikes will be issued due to in-game reports or otherwise issued automatically – they will only be issued if/when investigated by support. Accidental TKs or the like will not be a ban-able offense, only deliberate TKs and similar bad in-game behavior.

If WG will run such thing, they will definitely check and verify all appeals on banned accounts. Who am i kidding, please expect copy paste reply like it was before that they have checked it and you have “violated” rules by being better than 90% of your or enemy team

WG NA will NOT take replays of physic abuse (players pushing) right now and says use the report system. They did nothing about T-22 rigging. Now they are judge, jury and executor as well as you have to appeal to THEM. Confidence is at a all time low after T-22 RIGGATE and then they step this out. I swear WG is trying to destroy their own game.

Nyx? I believe mentioned on the WoWS forums that no strikes/bans would be issued automatically or due to in-game reports. Strikes would only be issued for tickets and the like. TKs / team damage would not result in a strike unless reported by ticket and deliberate – accidental TKs will not result in a strike.

Bahahahahaha what a bunch of bs, sure u can appeal a strike but how can an automated response determine if it should be overruled? I have no confidence in their ability to handle it. When ever I’ve had a complaint, the NA response was either an automated one or a sarcastic response that they know what’s going on and I shouldn’t bother them. What’s going to be different between this and what they’re going to do?

Well after 3 years of paying for prem time it’s time to give it up. No way am I spending cold hard cash so I can get perma banned due to an artificial and capricious reporting system. Will have to check the legality of this in NA because if you pay for X time and you don’t use it because of a ban they should issue a refund . Wonder how they will defend this in a small claims court where likely plaintiff actions like these will not go well for WG

rather than positive reinforcements, this sounds like tightening the regime…

I am under the perception that the 90-day prem raffle is not available for repentant forumites like me who has a couple warnings under his belt. i think the WoT team should focus more on rewarding positive players more than punishing salties since the current existing system is already OK

Then again i’m on SEA server, and this is for NA, so us not-NA guys shouldn’t be affected

Funny how in the comments about a clwan slate on rule violations people immediately start rambking about TKing. I consider WG’s step to be purely income based and as such a move inti the wrong direction. Seen this on other games and it never worjed well but started turning non-problematic customers away. One can only hope that lottery does its trick… though the mere fact it is merely a lottery and not a direct reward system will render it powerless.

This looks like WG-NA is attempting to let the automated reporting system do all the work. With abusers flooding the system, I doubt seriously that anyone banned will receive an actual review.

This type of automated / non-transparent punishment system will never hold up in court or mediation – at least not in the US. As mentioned earlier, perma-banned paying customers with premium accounts will be taking WG-NA to small claims court for a refund. Also players with premium AFV’s will be heading to the courts as well. The boys in Cypress will take a dim view of the situation when they start losing revenue.

Is there a guidelines page as to what constitutes problematic ingame chat? Obviously calling someone various obscene names probably counts, but what about if someone does something stupid ( e.g. charge in a straight line to enemy without even shooting, or drown immediately at start, or TK ) and you call them an idiot and tell them to uninstall, are you in trouble then? Or is it only based on number of reports? They can’t have time for human review, so machines responses will be just by numbers of complaints, so anyone could be banned if enough people gang up on them and all report them? And who says what constitutes unacceptable chat? I can see a lot of problems coming up with this. Maybe simplest just to turn all chat off completely ( like I do for my son’s account ) and say forget it. But then that’s less inclusive for the whole community. Sigh.

The system is broken. WG knows it and all they do is break it even more.

There are mods out there that auto-report arty-players or players with more than 2600 wn8 or less than 500.

We all know the idiots that brag about abusing the report-system.

There were plans to give reports a “weight”. That way reports of players who abuse the system dont count that much, reports of players who dont abuse it count more. There were also plans to give the “abusive” players less reports per day and the “non-abusive” more.

i mean, im a relatively good player, 1900wn8, 3k recent (30 days). That, plus the fact that 20% of my battles are in arty, gives me a lot of false reports. players dont understand how i play and report me for unsport, report me for arty, report me for not helping them when they act stupid. plus the enemy players who report me for killing them, for haxx because they dont understand the camosystem or cause i do shots that they are not good enough for.

On the other hand, i get randomly shot at by teammates, teamkilled when in arty, get rammed or blocked, people insult me… and i have just 10 reports per 24 hrs. But i do more than 5 battles per day… this is just ridiculus.

If this will come to the eu-servers we will see a lot of good players beeing permabanned for no real reason.

MY PROPOSAL IS: permaban all players with less than 1200 wn8. 2 years ago WG said this would just cost them 2% of their income, but on the other hand it would solve a most of the problems with toxicity and unsportsman playstyle. Plus we would get rid of all bots at once.

Dear PARTY1C, who are you to say that 1200 wn8 is the line to split by? There are a lot of players have less than 1200 wn8 and they dont have unsportsman playstyle nor toxic.
And a lot of good+ player complaining like a little child against their team mates.

You solution sounds more like “get the black people, or the jews outside”

never said that these players are toxic. WG just stated they would lose nearly no income if these players are banned.

but in my honest opinion, its unsportsman to buy a tier 8 prem tank that you cant put in good use and then ruin the battle for 14 other players by camping behind arty with it.
or click the battle-button when your internet-connection is so bad and unstable that you get in the battle 3 minutes after it started if at all.
there are a lot of things that bad players do that ruins the fun for others, like camping, yolo-rushing, going the “heavy-way” with a scout, dont scout at all, crossing open field on highway with maus or whatever you can think of.

you cant say “world of tonks is esport nao” and then let unicums, greens and tomatos clash in random battles… most of the problems with tixicity, false reports and so on are the direct result of this. the good players hate the bad ones because they ruin their fun, act stupid and dont teamplay. the bad players hate the good ones because they cant defend themself against the unicums, get called bot and noob and feel betrayed by good teammates when they dont understand whats happening arround them.

i report players that act retarded and i get reported by players who dont understand the game. WG needs to end this situation, maybe by seperating players into leagues like they do allready in the ranked teambattles.

So, if I play arty but there are five people on the team who don’t like arty. They all send in in-game complaints about me, then I’m banned for life? There is no statue of limitations and no means for appeal. Yeah, that sounds fair.

I have zero trust in Wargaming’s rule enforcement anymore. Racism and “unsportsmanlike behaviour” are an everyday experience in the game, so even if they actually do something, which I am increasingly calling into question, it is not nearly enough. And that’s not even talking about the use of cheat mods.

As to Wargaming NA’s idea of rewarding “positive” accounts, I guess it’s nice and laudable and all, but it won’t help much to reduce the amount of rule violations in the game. Tougher enforcement might, on the other hand, but like I said, I don’t really trust Wargaming on that. At all. I bet it will take Wargaming a long, long time indeed to take “good”, i.e. paying accounts, out of the game.

I can see this going horribly wrong as people will report a LOT just because they suck and think someone is “hacking” due to them shooting them or trolling. Also the positiive report system is already implemented in WOWS so why can’t they add it into this game as well?